Reassurance

Sweet Pea's caseworker came out to visit yesterday afternoon.  She came in reassuring me that we have nothing to worry about.  That bio mom does not have it together, that things do not look good for her at all.  That Sweet Pea is right where she should be and where she will stay.

I'll be glad to be out of this limbo phase, to be past the parental termination trial (provided it goes the way we hope it will).  I imagine I'll always have mixed feelings about this process and about bio mom.  The fact that someone else has to suffer for us to finally have our family is difficult to accept.  It's like imagining that for me to finally have a successful pregnancy that someone else would have to suffer a loss at the same time.  It's hard to be completely at peace knowing our happiness is causing someone else pain.

But then Sweet Pea reaches up to me, touches my face gently and gives me kiss.  Yes, it's all worth it.  Worth it for this sweet little girl who has come into our lives and changed us forever.

Mixed feelings meeting

I went to Sweet Pea's permanency plan meeting this morning.  Turns out, I had reason to be a little worried.  Bio mom was there.  It was my first time to see her.  So glad I did not bring Sweet Pea, who hasn't seen her since she was 10 days old.  It was comforting that the caseworker and our case manager sat on each side of me, so I felt supported.  There were only five of us in the room and bio mom sat right across from me.

I have such mixed feelings about bio mom and that is a serious understatement.  On one hand, obviously she's done things and made choices that led to her having Sweet Pea removed from her care.  So it seems like it would be easy to vilify her, right?  But then again, she did give birth to this adorable baby who I love so much and she is trying to do the right thing, even if it is in a limited way.

I tried not to make too much eye contact with her, but when they gave her a chance to talk, she asked me all kinds of questions about Sweet Pea.  Has her hair grown in?  Does she look like me?  Is she happy?  Does she still have thick eyebrows?  She was disappointed I didn't bring Sweet Pea and had even brought a camera to take pictures of her.  She tried to give this disposable camera to me to take pictures to send to her, but luckily the caseworker intervened and offered to share pictures with bio mom just as she has been all these months.  Bio mom said she would appreciate that because just getting one picture of Sweet Pea brightens her whole day.  Break my heart...

Towards the end, they asked the caseworker what the permanency plan is and she repeated (as it has been since we got Sweet Pea):  Termination of parental rights and unrelated adoption.  They asked bio mom if this had been explained to her.  She said she understood and is trying to do all she can to get her back and hopes for an extension.

As we left, our case manager repeated to me that bio mom's efforts really are just too little too late.  I want to say I hope she's right, but then there's those mixed feelings again.  I don't want Sweet Pea to go anywhere.  Selfishly, I want her to stay right here with us forever.  But I feel for bio mom more than I ever thought I would.  But then again, I know being with bio mom would not be good for Sweet Pea at this time.  She is not stable to say the least and is essentially a stranger to a baby who needs quite a bit of extra care.

I am glad I went to the meeting.  I'm glad I got meeting bio mom out of the way and that it wasn't traumatic to anyone involved.  She talked about hoping to get visitation with Sweet Pea, but she's glad to know she's well taken care of now.  I'm sure she'll be at our court dates next month when we were planning to have Sweet Pea there too.  I guess we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.

I felt like crying on the way home, but didn't.  It was a weird feeling.  I know we are lucky that we haven't had to deal with bio families at all up to this point and that is rare in the foster care system.  It's just so hard to give so much of yourself to someone/something and wonder if it will all be taken away.  It's hard to know how much bio mom does love Sweet Pea in her own way.  I feel emotionally exhausted after this today and I still have to go put on my therapist hat and work with pregnant and parenting teen girls.  Can't wait to relax and go to bed early tonight...

Check-up

I took Sweet Pea to her 1 year check-up with the pediatrician today.  I was hoping for her to weigh at least 14 pounds and she was just under.  She has grown a lot taller now and is now finally actually on the growth chart for her height, but just barely.  Her head circumference is in the 0.04th percentile, but finally at least has a percentile.  Her weight is still in the zero percentile, but, hey, at least she's still growing  :)

The doctor did have a concern because she could feel the edge of Sweet Pea's liver about 1 cm lower/bigger (?) than it should be.  She was worried that possibly her heart condition could be making other organs work harder to overcompensate.  She ordered more lab work and suggested I move up the next cardiology appointment.  She didn't make a huge deal out of it, but it is concerning because she's never felt it before.  It wasn't like she said she needed an emergency cardiology appointment, but it still has me worried.  Ever since we've had Sweet Pea, all of her medical needs have only improved-- she's been taken off medications and looks more and more healthy all the time.  I think I'll feel better when we know what's going on with this, but it's hard not to be the worrier I tend to be.

Speaking of worrying, I'm going to a permanency plan meeting about Sweet Pea tomorrow morning.  This is another thing they say I don't need to be at, but I am choosing to go to be there for her.  I want it to be clear beyond a shadow of a doubt that we care for her best interests and that we're in this for the long haul.  It shouldn't be any new news at the meeting.  Just a recap of how she's doing and discussion of the plan for her.  I am a little concerned that bio mom could be there.  We've never seen her before, but technically she would be invited to this since termination has not happened yet.  Obviously I'm not taking Sweet Pea.  I know we could see bio mom at court, but this meeting will be in a much more informal setting and I'll be there without Shannon.  Sweet Pea's caseworker and our agency case manager will be there, so at least there will be two friendly faces who I know want Sweet Pea to stay with us.

She has been with us five months exactly today.  In some ways, it feels both longer and shorter.  It feels like we blinked and now she's one, but at the same time I can hardly imagine a time when she wasn't here.  We are so very blessed to have this sweet little girl come into our lives.  After all this time, I am so grateful to be here.

Happy 1st Birthday!

Today is Sweet Pea's 1st birthday.  I remember when we first got her, I could hardly imagine she would still be with us by this time.  It took me quite a while to even be able write her birthday on our calendar.  But, happily, here we are.  Here are a couple of pictures of us celebrating with cake and ice cream tonight:

Note the string to the party hat- this stayed on for all of five minutes, then was covered in frosting...

I think she liked it  :)

Could this really finally happen?

Our agency case manager came out for her monthly visit yesterday afternoon.  Sweet Pea was very hesitant with her.  She tends to take a while to warm up to visitors or new situations and this was no exception.  I'm sure every time someone else comes in the house, she's wondering "Now what does this person want me to do?"  With all the therapists and all the doctors she's seen, it's no wonder she's reluctant.  She has to look at me or touch me just to make sure everything is okay.

The visit went well.  Court is only about a month away now.  We have a permanency review hearing (basically just a check in) on July 13th, then termination of parental rights is scheduled for the 21st.  In light of Sweet Pea's bio parents lack of progress (or actually backsliding) it's looking like termination could actually happen as planned.  When our case manager heard about recent events in the case, her exact words were, "Well, that pretty much cinches termination then, doesn't it?"  So our conversation yesterday was a lot of *when* adoption happens, not *if*, which is amazing to think we might actually get there.  She explained that if parental termination happens as scheduled, CPS has a rule that any biological relatives have 90 days to come forward.  She said most likely Sweet Pea's attorney will petition to waive the 90 days, so we could possibly move into the adoption phase right away.  She said it could all go through as quickly as a month or two.  I never imagined it could happen that fast.  We could actually have Sweet Pea adopted as soon as the end of the summer or early fall.  Crazy.

I am thrilled with this news, but also still feel like I need to try to keep myself as guarded as I can.  It feels like this has all gone so smoothly, like I need to wait for the other shoe to drop.  They just gave us this beautiful little baby four and a half months ago who we've fallen completely in love with and has attached easily to us.  While she's still technically a foster child, we've never had to deal with visitation from any bio family or any other typically CPS hassles.  Hell, we've never even had a visit from licensing.  And now they say she could be ours to keep in a just a relatively short amount of time.  Maybe I'm just used to things not going so smoothly for us where babies are concerned.  Maybe I'm just used to imagining the worst so that I can be prepared if it happens, but then pleasantly surprised if it doesn't.  Maybe, just maybe, we've already had all our bad fortune and now it's finally our turn for pure happiness and joy.  Could we actually be that lucky?

Progress

Sweet Pea is doing so great lately.  She is not quite crawling up on all fours, but is commando crawling down on her belly everywhere now.  No more leaving her alone in a room and expecting her to stay in one place!  She has figured out how to transition from sitting down to her belly and can almost push herself back up to sitting too.  She so wants to stand, but doesn't quite have the balance or the comprehension that if she lets go, she's going to fall.  She loves to stand at our ottoman, jumping up and down and beating her hands with a huge smile, but will completely just let go or turn around any second so you have to stay right there with her.

She says "dada" and "baba", but is doing a little less babbling this week since she's so focused on practicing her crawling.  She definitely lets you know when she wants something though.  She's got quite a voice for such a little thing!

Finally all her therapists are getting to see all her progress and are so pleased with how well she is doing.  The speech therapist discharged her this week, the occupational therapist decided to switch to every other week and the physical therapist only thinks she's going to be coming for another month or so.  Woohoo!  Less people coming to our house that we have to work our schedule around!

Birthday-a-rama

Well, the month of birthdays at our home has officially begun.  Mine was today, Shannon's is Friday and Sweet Pea's first birthday is next Wednesday.  Today was mostly like any other Monday with two babies.  I had hoped they would give me a break and both take long afternoon naps since neither napped in the morning, but Sweet Pea had other ideas.  She is certainly becoming more vocal and opinionated.  She yells and throws her head back when she doesn't get her way.  We discovered this morning that she has a third tooth starting to come in, so hopefully that's the source of her extra-crankiness lately.  I hope it isn't a new stage that's here to stay.  After months of mostly sleeping through the night, she is now getting up usually once (but sometimes twice) a night to be fed.  She is soo close to crawling now and can actually scoot herself forward on her belly.  I think that's a lot of what's waking her up in the middle of the night now.  Not only is she extra hungry from all that new movement, I think she wakes herself up trying out her new trick in her crib then decides she needs to eat right then.  All this extra eating means she's been leaking through her diapers (what do you mean they don't make overnight diapers in size 1-- don't they imagine there could be one-year-olds still in size 1 diapers??), so we now have to change her diaper in the middle of the night and this royally pisses her off.  She screamed so much last night when I changed her diaper before feeding her at 4:30 in the morning, she woke up Shannon who came out to make sure we were okay.  As much as I'm a fan of sleep and really don't like having to get up in the middle of the night, I know it's good for her to get all the extra calories in her that we can.  I would love to see big improvements when we take her for her one year check-up later in the month.

We are having a party on Saturday to celebrate all of our birthdays, but I imagine it will mostly be about baby Sweet Pea.  Nothing too crazy, just friends and family over for food and fun.  Hopefully we don't all melt away in the over-100 degree heat.

Speaking of other unfair things for small babies, we cannot find a t-shirt that says "My 1st Birthday" in anything anywhere near Sweet Pea's size.  I know she's abnormally small and not even on the growth chart even for her adjusted age, but really she can't be the only tiny one-year-old.  We did find a bib that she can wear instead on top of her clothes, but I just had to complain a little bit...

Shape

I am determined to get in better shape.  I've had so many excuses before.  I was pregnant, I was recovering from a pregnancy loss, it was pointless to lose weight when I just planned to get pregnant and would be gaining weight anyway.  But all those excuses have disappeared now and I'm ready to reclaim my body.  Admittedly, my body has been through a lot in the past few years, but there's no reason I can't get back in better shape again.

When I was younger, I was always one of those people who could eat anything at all and never exercise and it never made any difference.  I was never athletic, never liked working out.  But nonetheless, in high school I was "skinny Jenny".  What I would give to have that body back...

Now that I'm in my 30s it's more true than ever that my body has definitely changed.  I'm surprised sometimes when I see pictures of myself now-- that is so not how I imagine myself in my head.  I don't expect to have my teenage body back, but it's time to make some changes for myself.

I've been trying to eat a little more sensibly and exercise more.  I've walked with the babies several times this week.  It's hard because we have to get going so early before it gets too hot to be outside anymore.  I'd always imagined it would be so easy to be healthy with me mostly staying home with the babies.  I could eat healthy right out of my fridge and would be chasing the babies around.  But in reality, it's also really easy to snack on whatever is around anytime I might want to.  And that's not always a lot of healthy snacking.  Truthfully there's not always a lot of chasing the babies-- I can mostly sit here on the couch and supervise without getting up too much.  But I'm trying to change that too.  I'm not trying to make any major, drastic changes.  I know I'm more likely to keep up with it if I make smaller, more reasonable changes that can fit easily into my life.

My biggest downfall is all the bad food that I love.  My absolute favorite thing to eat is hamburgers.  If it didn't matter, I could eat a hamburger every day of the week and be so happy.  But my body shows me that is not a good idea anymore.  I'm trying to limit myself to just one hamburger a week at the most.  It's also hard when Shannon cooks because he tends to make HUGE portions.  I really appreciate him cooking and love his food, but it's just so MUCH.

I used my Wii Fit a few weeks ago.  It had been almost a year since I last used it.  It told me I weighed exactly the same weight that I had a year ago.  At least it wasn't more, but I'm ready for it to be less.  I've lost a couple of pounds this week, but I know that can easily creep right back up if I'm not careful.  I am determined to lose at least 10 pounds and/or a pant size by the end of the summer.  I have boxes full of clothes that are one size smaller that I would love to be able to wear again.  I know that's still not necessarily an ideal weight for me, but it's a good start.  Wish me luck!!